Sara Pascoe has spoken about being a precocious child, convinced she was going to win her first Oscar by the age of 22.

The comic was convinced she was going to be a famous actor and put on plays at school assemblies with her sister Cheryl which her fellow pupils hated.

But she said: ‘I didn't care if people didn't like me as long as they were looking at me while they didn't like me.’

The comic recalled a Theatre In Education group coming to her school to deliver a worthy anti-drink-drive play – which she says affected her so much she still hasn’t learned to drive – after which ‘I put my hand up to tell them I was going to be an actor… I was like, "I'm going to go to RADA, I'm gonna go to Broadway, and then I'm gonna win my first Oscar by 22"  I was like this little mini Tom Hiddleston.'

She suggested the young her even thought she'd kill herself if she didn't have that Academy Award by 22, 'but it didn't happen.’

Her comments came on the Dish from Waitrose podcast, where she talked about the ‘assemblies no one had asked for’ that she and Cheryl put on.

‘We did a two-woman version of Oliver where I played Fagin and she played the Artful Dodger. Oliver wasn't even in it.

‘I was really keen on the fact that my school wasn't doing enough to educate the children about war. So I did like an alphabet of war assembly for everyone, introducing them to the war poets.

‘I was very unpopular, can you guess? But this is the thing, and it did actually serve me well in terms of becoming a comedian… I was always more comfortable in a room with everyone looking at me being like, "You bellend"  rather than just being in the room, where no one even cares that I'm here.’

In her desperation to become famous she auditioned for Michael Barrymore's My Kind of People talent show in a shopping centre, but fluffed up the start of her song and ended up in tears – then took on whatever entertainment jobs she could find.

‘I sang with Robbie Williams's dad for three months in a hotel in Nottingham in 2001,’ she told hosts Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett.

‘I was doing those kind of ents jobs. I was, I was in a hotel in Lanzarote doing hotel entertainment. You know, when you do the bingo and stuff as well as your little shows. 

‘Then I decided to go to university… I realised you could do plays there and that drama school's quite respected academia. So I did an English degree, did loads of plays, auditioned for drama school for another two years. 

‘While I was trying to be an actor, I was living with my friend Cariad [Lloyd], and basically I started doing gigs as a character to keep my hand in, because it's so hard to be an actor -and everyone wants to be an actor. And the minute I did stand-up, I was like, "Oh, this is what I'm supposed to do." And everything, everything became clear. It's like, "Oh, that is what I am."’

'My first gig, I went home, it was in Balham, so I was on this long Tube ride to Barnet, and I was just so full of all of the good chemicals, hormones. And I was like, "I'm a one-man band, I'm gonna travel the world telling my stories"  And I'm so lucky and that's 20 years next year and I'm still in a honeymoon period with my job, really. I’m really lucky.’

Pascoe has also belatedly realised she would probably have made a terrible actor anyway. She said: ‘I found this out in therapy about four years ago. I'm a really bad actor because I don't lose myself, because I want to be seen. 

‘And that's comedy. Comedy is showing yourself… So, it all worked out really well.’ 

She also spoke about how grateful she is that anyone would leave their house to come and see her on tour ‘when there's so much on their Netflix they haven't seen [and] you can just be snuggled at home with your own snacks’. 

‘Leaving the house is such an act of wanting community, wanting togetherness, that makes me feel very emotional,’ she said. ‘And the fact that they've come to see me, oh my God, I'm so lucky. 

‘I try to make myself feel really grateful. Because I think otherwise you can get too much like, "Oh what if I'm not good? Or what if I'm too tired?"And they're negative thoughts to put in yourself.’

The comedian also spoke about her forthcoming TLC show Zero Stars, in which she and Roisin Conaty travelled to ‘very poorly reviewed tourist attractions’ to see if they were as bad as travellers made out.

‘People are really harsh online now,’ she said. ‘One tiny thing or something that isn't to their particular taste. Often we would go and have a really wonderful time, because when you are with your friend and you want to have a nice time, life is fantastic. And it's what you make of it. But there was some, you know, odd stuff.

‘We went on the worst cruise… I think the ship is from the 1980s. And you can't get off.  Well, there was a hole! There was a hole in my bathroom. It didn't have a drain, it just had like a hole in the floor… and it was full of hair. Thirty years of hair. I said to the director, ‘You've got to get in my room. It's got this hole full of hair." And he went, "We can’t. We can't show, a hair hole!’

‘It's funny what they made us do. I went to Transylvania  which I never would have done by myself. We got to do graffiti. We shot guns! In a rifle range in Albania.  

‘Roisin had her nose waxed in Turkey. I hope she won't mind me saying that. 

‘They often didn't tell us really what was going to happen. We thought we were in a barber's. I thought I might get a head massage and then he starts putting cotton buds, with wax, up Roisin's nose. He yanks them out, he's like, ‘Your turn.’ I was like, ‘No, no, no..’ I think it is fantastic. I'm just scared of pain.’

She also spoke about her fantasy about Take That…

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